Page 97 of Marked By the Enemy
“But we haven’t,” Willow said.
“Not yet,” I replied.
A few heads turned.
“We’ve been building from within,” I said. “Holding the memory, protecting the weave. But he’s coming to seed doubt.”
A murmur rippled. I didn’t interrupt it. I let it grow and fall quiet.
I peered at the rune on my palm, though it didn’t shimmer silver for me. “So tonight, we speak.” I turned toward Nessa. “What do you fear most now?”
“I am fearful I’ll forget who I was before I came here with my friends, Ruen, Astrid, and Jack. I fear I’ll forget the good times I had with my husband before his life was taken by thieves.”
I turned to Astrid. “And you?”
“That you’ll be taken. And we’ll follow someone else.”
I nodded. “Good. Hold that. Speak it. Burn it.”
I stepped back.
“The vow-magic doesn’t reward silence. It survives it. But only if we name what waits beneath.”
One by one, they spoke. Some offered words. Some placed tokens again—smoke-touched cloth, stone buttons, names whispered into fire.
Darian didn’t speak until the end. He stepped forward last, slow and solid.
I hated that his silence still stirred something warm beneath my ribs. Even now, even here.
His eyes were fixed on the surrounding air. On the bond. Finally, he said, “I’m not afraid of him. I’m afraid of forgetting why we started.”
A ripple ran through the ground—through the stones, through our skin, through whatever root system the corridor had threaded into this place. The mark on my chest warmed in confirmation. The door was still open.
After midnight, I stood at the northern tower with Darian beside me. Our shoulders didn’t touch, but the tether felt louder in that space between us—like it was asking me to close it. We hadn’t spoken in hours. Below us, the keep was lit from within. The marked hadn’t gone to sleep. A few walked down the outer paths. Others rested in twos against the stone. Willow kneeled near the copper bowl, hands open, eyes closed. The ring inside the bowl gave off a faint red shimmer.
Darian shifted his weight beside me. “It changed when the vow stilled.”
“When?”
“When the frost broke. It didn’t vanish. It stepped back.”
“For what?”
His eyes tracked me. “You.”
The quiet stretched. The air between us cracked like ice underfoot. If he had touched me, I might’ve shattered. I had a strong awareness of his heartbeat and my own. Weakness overcame me. I needed to touch him and explore.
Then a call came from the southern wall. We moved at once: past the inner gate, past the corridor’s rim. The stones didn’t flare. The wards didn’t rise. But something in the air shifted with each step—like the corridor was listening again, close and coiled.
Lord Jeyin and Holt pointed toward a lone figure in a cloak. I was relieved it was not the man with horns who wanted to use the same gateway as the demons. This person looked like he was from this world. He walked with the help of a twisted staff that bent at its midpoint like it had grown around something that refused to break. The mist parted for him like it agreed.
The bond stirred low in welcome. Darian stepped in front of me. I let him. The man stopped at the edge of the stone ring. I noticed a presence behind us. It was the ash-man who had insisted he was one of the first—though I didn’t know how even a pure fae could live that long.
Fae lived to eight-hundred without accident or disease. They rarely lived longer than that. But had that been one for the Bone Seats’ many lies? Quite likely.
The new arrival lowered his hood. He was an old man with bark-like, creased skin across his jaw, stood there. His eyes were black from memory. He raised one hand, and I saw the sigil of two fish on his palm. “I walked the corridor.”
I exchanged a look with Jeyin and Holt, and they nodded back at me. The bond thinned and reformed. From behind us there was a metallic vibration, and when I turned my head, the ring in the bowl was shaking and sparking, and Willow was looking up at us wide-eyed.
